Turf surfaces are commonly used as the playing surfaces for athletic or recreational activities, such as golf courses, football fields, baseball fields, and the like. Traditionally, turf surfaces at these venues comprised natural turf surfaces in which the soil or dirt of the ground had an upper layer of grass growing out of the soil or dirt. Obviously, such natural turf surfaces were restricted to outdoor environments, had to have adequate amounts of sunshine and water in order to keep the grass alive, and the grassy top layer had to be periodically cut or mowed to keep the height of the grass at a desired level. Accordingly, the costs to maintain a natural turf surface could be fairly substantial.
In more recent years, artificial turf surfaces have been developed that more closely resemble the look and feel of natural turf surfaces than early versions of artificial turf surfaces. These more recent artificial turf surfaces comprise a backing material that is laid atop the ground with the backing material having upstanding ribbons of artificial fibers that resemble blades of grass. In addition, such turf surfaces have one or more layers of particulate material placed atop the backing material and spread out over the backing material to surround the grass like fibers. The layers of particulate material can comprise a bottom layer of intermixed hard sand particles and resilient rubber granules and a top layer of resilient rubber granules as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,306,838. One brand of such an artificial turf surface that is available today is FieldTurf.
Turf surfaces, whether natural or artificial, have different grooming needs to keep them looking and playing their best. For example, a natural turf surface is often treated with a particulate top dressing material that must be spread or leveled out evenly in order to be most effective. In the morning, a natural turf surface is often heavily laden with dew. After mowing, a natural turf surface might be littered with clumps of grass clippings. It has been known in the art to pull a groomer across a natural turf surface to address these various needs, the groomer having a plurality of brushes that smooth the natural turf surface to smooth out top dressing material, to remove dew, or to smooth out and hide the grass clippings in the uncut grass. U.S. Pat. No. 6,655,469 shows a known prior art groomer.
Artificial turf surfaces also need to be groomed, but for somewhat different reasons. There obviously will never be any grass clippings lying atop such a turf surface. But, the layers of particulate material in the artificial turf surface, which layers will be collectively referred to herein as the infill material, can and do get disturbed or redistributed by the action of those who are playing or moving on the turf surface. Thus, the infill material over time gets redistributed into high spots and low spots. When this happens, it would be desirable in such turf surfaces to level out the infill material so that it has a more uniform depth across the extent of the turf surface.
Various attempts have been made to groom artificial turf surfaces using the same types of groomers that have been used for natural turf surfaces. Basically, the same types of brushes and spring tines that are towed over natural turf surfaces have been towed over artificial turf surfaces. For example, GreensGroomer Worldwide, Inc., the assignee of the '469 patent referred to above, sells a groomer for use on natural turf surfaces that has a brush and spring tine design substantially the same as the groomer that is sold for use on artificial turf surfaces.
However, the Applicants herein have discovered that substantially better results can be obtained when grooming artificial turf surfaces if a different style of brush and a different arrangement of spring tines are used. In addition, the Applicants have provided a single groomer that is convertible between use on natural turf surfaces and use on artificial turf surfaces so that duplicate pieces of equipment are not needed. Accordingly, the groomer disclosed and claimed in this application is a further advance in the art relating to the grooming of turf surfaces.